If You Die in a Dream
by SweetDragonSeeker
Summary: His world is in ruins. What is there left for him to live for?
1. Chapter 1

**Some random fanfiction written to distract myself from the monotony that is my job. Will continue. Enjoy.**

 **SSS**

After she dies, he disappears for three months. They search for him, but when he is finally brought home, broken and half dead, it is on Pantherlily's shoulders. They lose the exceed shortly after that, and they have to do their best not to lose the wizard as well. In the absence of those closest to him, it is Erza who forces him to eat, food for his healing body and iron for his depleted magic. It is Lucy and Grey who treat his wounds and seal his bones back together and Wendy who sits with him through the fevers that follow. And it is Natsu who, when his body is mended, forces him back to his feet.

"C'mon man, they wouldn't want you to just lie here and let yourself die! So you know what you're gonna do? You're gonna get up, and go the board, and get back to work."

So he does. He takes a job, and another after it. And another. And each time he returns, he comes back a little more broken.

"Gajeel?" Lucy wraps her knuckles against his door, hesitant despite how often she's done it. He wishes she wouldn't; that they would go away and not intrude on his pain. But if they did…

"Go away." his voice is rough and guttural, and she pushes the door open at the sound.

"We're here to help."

He doesn't move from where he's lying on his bed, still dressed in tattered clothes, and doesn't turn his head as the door bumps gently against the wall. The light shining through the window illuminates the dried blood covering his neck, and throws the odd angle in which his arm is bent into sharp relief.

"Don't want your help."

This too, has become routine. He never wants their help, never invites it, but he won't resist it either. As though, no matter how much he would welcome death, a part of him knows he should at least try to go on and fights to do so.

" _They wouldn't want you to just lie down and die!"_

Their images haunt him every day. Every moment. Levy's smile. The feel of her in his arms. Lily's dry tones and sly grins. He can't even escape in sleep; not when they haunt his dreams even more vividly than his waking hours. He hasn't really slept in months.

He doesn't look at Lucy as she helps bandage the wound on his throat, or at Grey as he yanks his broken arm straight and encases it in a cast of ice to keep it stable. As they put him back together, so he can go out again and tear himself a little further apart.


	2. Chapter 2

**Told you I would continue.**

 **SSS**

"Hey."

A gentle hand shakes Levy awake, and she blinks, eyes still clouded with sleep.

"Mira?"

Mirajane smiles gently, though the expression doesn't reach her eyes.

"Lily's here, sweetie; you should go get some rest."

Levy nods, still bleary, and watches as Mira retreats.

"...Where…?" she mumbles, brushing hair out of her face and blinking to clear her eyes.

It takes her a moment to remember. She's at the hospital. Slowly, she glances down at the man lying in the bed beside her chair.

"Gajeel." she bites her lip, tears welling like they do every day. The dragonslayer hasn't so much as twitched a finger or made a sound in three months. A thin grey miasma hovers over him, evidence of the last spell inflicted on him. A spell that has kept him comatose, and…

Levy's hand slides through his hair, down his face, and finds a fresh bandage under his jaw. A new wound that wasn't there when she fell asleep. That won't be there when they go to change the bandages. Everyday, there are more. Some of them have resembled claw or bite marks; others look as though they were inflicted by human weapons, and still others appear as magic burns. More than once, they've nearly lost him to blood loss when more than one wound opens at the same time. They patch him up, and when they look again the wounds are gone as if they never were.

She's searched for hours and hours, and she still doesn't know what kind of spell it is, let alone how to break it.

All she knows is that, however slowly, Gajeel is dying. The spell is taking his life one wound and one day at a time.

Pantherlily pads softly up beside her chair, eyes flicking from her, to Gajeel, back to her, then to Gajeel again, where they stay. Neither of them speaks. The only thing that moves in the room is the spell, shifting around the dragonslayer's prone form.

He doesn't have much time left.


End file.
